In thinking on what is at stake on Tuesday, I was struck by coming across the same allusion to "careless people" by two very different bloggers:

From Katherine at Obsidian Wings:
This is the quotation that explains the Bush administration for me, better than any other:
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made”--The Great Gatsby
And from the Brooding Persian:
Tehran is abuzz with excited whispers. You can’t avoid feeling that a wave has started. Of course, we all know our dear rulers are not going to disappear simply because Mr. Yazdi has decided to grace us with his presence. And this gets me even more irritated with the proverbial Toms and Daisies of this world.

Fitzgerald had them pegged. Aren’t they really the callous ones who don’t even show up for the funerals? You don’t start something if there are no viable plans in works to see it successfully to the end. Which makes me even more suspicious of an October surprise in the making. No matter though; a bold initiative nonetheless. Such is life. One has to start from somewhere!
Katherine continues:
They are careless people, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Karl Rove and Condoleeza Rice and the rest. They have smashed up Iraq. They have smashed up our budget. They have smashed the lives of innocent prisoners. They have done everything possible to allow coal and oil and timber companies to smash up our land. They have smashed up our reputation in the world. They have done their best to smash up the Constitution. I can only hope that a few months from now, they will retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it is that keeps them together, and let other people clean up the mess they have made.
I share her wish. But regardless of the election's outcome, I wish for all of us, as a nation, to come to understand how the carelessness of the powerful can do as much harm as the malice of the weak.